Accidentally Hiding the Gospel

Good morning!  My name is David Sorn, and I’m the Lead Pastor here at Renovation Church!

If you weren’t here last week, we mentioned that we are continuing to grow very quickly here…so much so that we are starting to run out of parking and seats already at some of our services.

(4 Services Slide)

So starting on March 16th we will be going to 4 services from that day until Memorial Day.

Our service times will be

8:00am, 9:10, 10:20, & 11:30

Free coffee for everyone before 8:00am…every week!

We want you to come early and open up seats for people to come hear about Christ!

And I said last week that our biggest need is volunteers.

It takes a ton of people to run an entire nother service, and obviously not every person serves every week

So I said we needed 255 volunteers, and we had an amazing response last week:  In fact, in just one morning, 176 of you responded to serve!

I was so in awe of you, church.

You really stepped up.

If you signed up last week, respond to the email that was sent out to you.

We’re still waiting on a lot of people to confirm.

Jesus says in Mathew 5, “Let your yes be yes.”

As imitators of Christ, it’s critical that we are all “people of our word”

(Volunteer Current Needs Slide)

This means we still have 79 spots to go!

If you haven’t already, please take a look now at the volunteer team descriptions page at your chair to see the many ways you can serve there.

If you’re already on a team or two, this ask is not for you.

But for the hundreds & hundreds of you that are new over the past 6 to 12 months, we need you to pick up an oar, and be a part of what God is doing here so we can keep reaching this area for Christ!

On the screen, you can see the needs we have left if we’re going to pull this off!

We still need 30 volunteers in Renovation Kids.

34 in Prayer as we want to start also scheduling people to pray before our services…

…because prayer is just that important to us.

And there are a few other teams that still indeed do need your help.

You can sign up through the Renovation Church app or website, or you can fill out that ¼ sheet card right now (go ahead), and then drop it into the buckets at the worship center doors today as you leave the service.

1 TIMOTHY INTRODUCTION

(1 Timothy Series Slide)

All right, this morning we are starting a brand-new series as we are going to teach verse-by-verse through another book in the Bible:  1 Timothy

1 Timothy is a letter written by one of the early leaders of the Christian Church, the Apostle Paul.

And it’s written just a few years before he was martyred for his faith.

If you’ve ever read the Book of Acts, which is the story of the early Christian Church, 1 Timothy actually takes place AFTER the book of Acts ends.

Acts ends while Paul is in prison in Rome, but we know from some of Paul’s other letters that he eventually gets out of prison.

And embarked on a 4th missionary journey.

And it was during that journey that Paul left the young pastor and leader (Timothy), in a town called Ephesus (which is in modern day Western Turkey) to lead the church there.

Now Timothy was originally from the city of Lystra, in Galatia…

…and the Bible specifically points out that he was discipled by his Christian mother, Eunice, and his grandmother, Lois (shout out to moms & grandmas raising up future world changers!)

And Timothy went along on some of Paul’s other missionary journeys to preach the Gospel of Jesus in other towns.

So, by the time 1 Timothy was written, Timothy had already worked with Paul for over 10 years.

And so this is a letter from Timothy’s spiritual father and mentor

And Paul is outlining for Timothy the ways in which Timothy should lead the church in Ephesus (which is the same town the letter of Ephesians was written to)

Paul is going to give Timothy instructions on how to deal with false teaching, how to set up church leadership, how to take care of widows, and plenty more.

You can see that the subtitle for our 1 Timothy series is: “God’s blueprint for his church”

So, let’s get started with chapter 1, verse 1.

1 Timothy 1:1-7

Page 810

We’re going to spend 12 weeks teaching verse-by-verse through this entire letter.

6 weeks now, and then 6 weeks a bit later.

And I want to encourage you to read through the whole letter even this week.

It’s just 6 short chapters.

But it has a lot of challenging stuff, particularly to our modern-day American culture.

MYTHS, GENEAOLOGIES, AND MEANINGLESS TALK

(1 Timothy 1:1-7) – NIV

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,

2 To Timothy my true son in the faith:

Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer 4 or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. 5 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

(Accidentally Hiding the Gospel )

Okay, keep your Bibles open…we’re going to keep coming back to this.

Okay, let’s start by looking at the 2nd half of verse 3.

Paul tells Timothy to stay in Ephesus so that he may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer, or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies.

And also in verse 6 he says that some have foolishly turned to “meaningless talk”

So basically, a bunch of the people in the Ephesian church have gotten overly focused on the non-essentials.

And by doing so, they have accidentally been hiding the Gospel from people.

In fact, these first 11 verses today show 2 different ways that, we as Christians, sometimes accidentally hide the gospel

And the Gospel, if you’re unfamiliar with that word, is the Good News that Jesus died for our sins and we can be forgiven when we put our faith in that.

2 Ways We Accidentally Hide the Gospel:

#1: We get focused on nonessentials (myths, genealogies, and meaningless talk)

Let’s talk through those 3 things.

The first one, myths, would be more representative of just false doctrine or heresy.

We covered some of those in our last series about America’s Golden Calves.

But people today still believe all sorts of myths about Christianity whether it be untrue stories about the virgin Mary, or that all faiths are just the same, or that when we die that we turn into angels, and on and on.

We should not follow myths (things that aren’t in Scripture!).

Secondly, Timothy is also instructed to command the believers to stop obsessing over endless genealogies.

At the time, many Jewish false teachers had created elaborate and fanciful stories about people from Old Testament Genealogies

…even though the Bible literally only listed the person’s name in a genealogy.

This is really similar to what the Catholic Church often teaches about its Saints.

Many of the Christians the Catholics call Saints were actually amazing, devoted followers of Christ, but the Catholic Church has added embellished stories to their lives, and many that have no historical basis whatsoever

And then, thirdly, Paul lists “meaningless talk” as something else to avoid.

This is similar to what Paul writes to another one of his proteges, Titus.

(Titus 3:9) – NIV

But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless.

Why are these quarrels & arguments about God’s law useless to Paul?

Isn’t God’s Word important?

Absolutely!

There’s a clue in verse 4 of our passage.

Look at the middle of verse 4….right where it says “Such things promote.”

Paul says, “such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work

2 Ways We Accidentally Hide the Gospel:

#1: We get focused on nonessentials (myths, genealogies, and meaningless talk)

And that is the key to interpreting this passage!

It’s not that it’s bad to want to dive deeper into the Bible, that’s great!

But if just leads to arguments & controversial speculations, and not actually “Advancing God’s Work” (as Paul says…that’s the Gospel), we have been led astray from our core purpose.

And we’ve ended up HIDING THE GOSPEL because we all got too distracted focusing on myths, genealogies, and meaningless talk.

It’s like if you were to go to the Used Car Lot because your teenager needs a car.

And you end standing by one car and arguing with your teenager for 45 minutes on how important or not important it is for a car to have Bluetooth or a sun roof or just good tires…

…and then the car salesman walks by and says, “Oooo, actually sorry, we haven’t put the sign up, but the engine actually doesn’t work on that one.”

The Gospel is the engine that advances God’s Work.

And we can debate all day on everything else, but if we don’t have the engine going, it doesn’t matter

And we fall into this trap sometimes.

Sometimes Christians get so distracted by things like the end times.

And they spend hours on end, on the internet, trying to figure out who the anti-Christ is…and when Jesus will come back.

Even though Jesus literally says in Matthew 24 that “we can’t know the day or the hour”

I think about this old comic sometimes:

(Eschatology Comic)

It says:  My wife just left me, I lost my job, I need surgery, and my spirits have hit bottom.  Pastor, you’ve gotta help me.  What’s the difference between pre-, post-, and amillennialism?”

(Which are different Biblical theories of the world will end)

Or, I think of some churches whose Theological Statements of Faith are literally almost 200 pages long, but it’s been years since someone gave their life to Christ in their church.

75% of churches in America didn’t see 1 person come to Christ last year.

And some of these churches are teaching even the finest details of the Biblical law, and going over every theological argument…

…but in their relentless pursuit of truth, they’ve accidentally hidden the gospel from those who would attend their churches.

And I don’t think it’s their intent, or their heart, but Paul is saying it’s so easy to get distracted from our main engine…especially by good things.

2 Ways We Accidentally Hide the Gospel:

#1: We get focused on nonessentials (myths, genealogies, and meaningless talk)

And even ourselves…

…you maybe do your daily time in your Bible App, or Through the Word…

And you go deep into the Scriptures at BSF going through the Book of Revelation…

And you take your Renovation U classes every summer…

…and those are all awesome things.

But look at verse 5:

The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

So Paul is saying in verse 4, that the ultimate goal of our churches is the advancing of God’s Work, and also in verse 5, that the ultimate goal of us as individuals is love…especially a love for people’s souls.

So if we study and study and study, but we are not changed, and the people around us are not changed…

…then we are missing something.

Our main commission from Jesus to go therefore and be disciple-makers not disciple-consumers.

And so if you’re not leading anyone to Christ, Paul would say, “We’ve gotten distracted by our own spiritual pursuits and nonessentials”

We need to think of our spiritual life like we do our physical bodies.

We need to eat good things, but we also need to exercise and put those calories to use.

Similarly, the goal isn’t just to eat up a bunch of spiritual content and get bloated on Bible knowledge.

The goal is to take that content and “advance God’s work” (the Gospel) as Paul says.

And so Paul wants Timothy to keep that Ephesian church focused FIRST & FOREMOST, on the Gospel.

FORGETTING THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THE LAW

Okay, let’s keeping reading

Page 810

1 Timothy 1:8-11

(1 Timothy 1:8-11) - NIV

8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

Okay, here is the second way that we end up accidentally hiding the Gospel from people.

2 Ways We Accidentally Hide the Gospel:

#1: We get focused on nonessentials (myths, genealogies, and meaningless talk)

#2: We forget the law is primarily for unbelievers

When you hear the phrase “The law” in the Bible, that’s like the 10 commandments, or even the New Testament’s teaching on what is right, and holy;  it’s talking about how we should live)

And Paul is saying that we have to properly apply that law.

Well, how?

Look at verse 9:  We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers

And then Paul goes on to list all sorts of ways that people sin and break God’s law.

So what is he doing here?

He wants Timothy to remind the church that God’s moral law isn’t just for Christians to discuss, debate, and apply to our own lives (although that is a part of it (we see that in other Scriptures)…

…but actually (Paul says) the proper main intention of the law, is to show unbelievers that they have sinned, and thus need a savior.

I always think of it this way.

Think about those Radar Speed Signs..

(Radar Speed Sign Image)

Let’s say you see this reminder of the law, and you’re driving and 35 in a 25.

The law can’t force you to obey.

You could speed up if you wanted to (and some of you do…because you hate authority)

But the law can’t force anyone to obey.

Just like telling non-Christians God’s moral law won’t automatically MAKE them holy

But what can the law do? The law can show you that you’re wrong (and that you’ve broken the law)

It flashes the truth at you

2 Ways We Accidentally Hide the Gospel:

#1: We get focused on nonessentials (myths, genealogies, and meaningless talk)

#2: We forget the law is primarily for unbelievers

And the law in the Scriptures is meant to operate in the same way.

Because unless you realize that you’ve sinned against God, you won’t think you need a Savior.

Which is why unbelievers need to hear the law.

But many of us end up hiding it from our friends & neighbors.

For example: I see this when I hear people, or even pastors, share with others about Jesus.

Lots of times we say, “Just want you to know that God loves you, and Jesus came for you, and you should invite Jesus into your heart.”

That’s not the gospel.

Most people won’t feel a need to respond to that.

And if they do, most will just continue headlong in their sin, and now they just feel that they got Jesus with them as their administrative assistant if they get in a jam, and need some prayers answered.

A couple of years ago, I got into watching street evangelists on YouTube for a month or so.

And one of the things that stood out to me is that SO many people were shocked and appalled whenever the evangelists mentioned sin.

And people would say back to them, “God doesn’t care about my sin!  I’m going to heaven because God loves me just the way I am!”

And I’m watching these evangelists in some pretty dark places, “They’re talking to people on drugs, in gangs, at Pride Parades (they’re not at a picnic at your local Baptist church)

But many of the people they spoke to felt ZERO need for Jesus because they had already accepted a false gospel:  “A gospel without a Savior”

One that says “God already loves you, you just be you”

And the same is true here in suburbia.

Statistically about 5% of the people in our city are atheists, about 15% are Christians.  A growing percentage are Muslim.

But I don’t see the other 75% of people frantically walking around Blaine with deep concern and anxiety for the future status of their soul.

WHY?

Because they’ve already accepted that false Gospel that God loves everyone, so they are going to heaven.

See, by not telling people that they’ve broken God’s law (and thus they need a Savior), what we’ve done, unintentionally, or accidentally, is we’re hiding the Gospel, we’re hiding the way to be saved.

So what is the primary purpose of the law?

(Romans 3:20) – NIV

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

Or, look at Romans 7

(Romans 7:7b) – NIV

I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

2 Ways We Accidentally Hide the Gospel:

#1: We get focused on nonessentials (myths, genealogies, and meaningless talk)

#2: We forget the law is primarily for unbelievers

Friends, we will not change the world around us for Christ unless we take Pastor Paul’s advice to Timothy and we share the full gospel again.

We need to be honest with people around us.

And tell them that they (like we too have) sinned against a holy God.

And because of that sin, God’s wrath will come upon us.

We are condemned to punishment, to separation from this perfect God, and that punishment is an eternity in hell (without Christ).

That’s what this actually says (I’m not making it up)

…we just don’t say that part out loud anymore that’s why it sounds so uncomfortable to our ears

But if people don’t hear that, they’re never going to know that they NEED a Savior.

So many Americans are shrug their shoulders at Jesus because they don’t see a point to Him.

They just see Him as a “buddy” they don’t really need.

Rather than the only way they can be saved from the coming wrath as 1 Thessalonians 1:10 says.

I’ve told you many times that when I was in middle school, my friend said to me, “David, if you were to die tonight, do you know that you would go to heaven?”

And I was offended!  Because I had to think about my sin, and breaking God’s law!

I told him he had 10 seconds to get out of my house!

But it was that offense that caused me to have to wonder if maybe I did need a Savior!

We can’t transform lives, unless we risk offense.

Too many of us are too afraid to talk about sin because we think that if we were to talk the way Paul talks in the Bible…it would offend people.

And it may.  It certainly did for Paul.  He was stoned and worse!

But let me remind you, over the last 50 years as American Christians have largely decided the gospel is kind of offensive, and so maybe we shouldn’t overtly talk about it that much, on our watch, Christian faith has shrunk rapidly in this country.

While Paul, who certainly offended some, also set the world on fire for Christ.

So my prayer is that we would be a church full of people that would not hide the full gospel…on accident or on purpose.

But that we could say with Paul in Romans 1

(Romans 1:16a) - NIV

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes

This is a hard word, but listen, but we’re so afraid of offending people by telling them that they have sinned and need a Savior…

But reason with me, won’t they be so much more offended if someday, God forbid, they are in hell, for all of eternity, unable to escape, and they realize that we didn’t tell them how to be saved simply because we didn’t want to make them temporarily uncomfortable on earth?

…in supposedly looking out for their best interests (or perhaps our own?), we chose to let them be eternally anguished instead.

Who do you need to tell about Jesus?

Now, that is hard to think about.

But it’s the truth, is it not?

And that is why, in 1 Timothy Chapter 1 that Paul is so concerned that we do not, in any way, in any shape, or any form, hide the full Gospel that brings salvation to everyone who believes.

Let’s pray for boldness.

Let me pray.